


Dilation and Curettage

by papofglencoe



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 03:59:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10711737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papofglencoe/pseuds/papofglencoe
Summary: The label might as well have said it—might as well have advertised the procedure Katniss was there for in bright neon lights, or painted in smoke across the sky. Dilation and Curettage. She was there to be opened up, to have some part of herself irrevocably hollowed out, and there didn’t seem much point in trying to hide that.





	Dilation and Curettage

**Author's Note:**

> Modern AU Everlark. 
> 
> Rated M for adult themes and explicit language. 
> 
> With special thanks, as always, to @dandelionsunset, @eala-musings, @everlylark, @finduilasnumenesse, and @jennagill for their friendship, support, guidance, and betaing. Contains direct, revised, and repurposed quotes from The Hunger Games books and films, which, unlike any mistakes you find here, are not mine. 
> 
> Song lyrics by Amy Winehouse.

_Over futile odds,_

_And laughed at by the gods,_

_And now the final frame,_

_Love is a losing game._

 

The clipboard balanced precariously on her lap, the letters on the top page of the informed consent form dancing a macabre jitterbug every time her knee pistoned up and down. Katniss gnawed the corner of her thumbnail, unwilling to steady the clipboard with her hand. If the damn thing fell, it fell. What did it fucking matter?

The solid wooden door leading back to the surgery snicked open, a heavily pregnant woman shuffling out with one hand on her swollen stomach and the other clutching a thin, filmy sheet of paper, mostly black, that showed in stark contrast the shadowy figure of the baby she was carrying inside her. Her beaming eyes met Katniss’ for a moment, but then flicked away nervously from whatever she saw lurking there.

Misery was catching, after all. Maybe bad luck was too.

“Here,” Peeta said quietly, reaching across the small end table separating them, some innocuous piece of office furniture generica designed to hold stacks of women’s health magazines no one wanted to read. He swiped the clipboard off her lap in one fluid motion. “Let me hold that for you.”

She watched him flip through the thick packet of papers, his brow furrowing as he delved deeper and deeper into the shit in front of him—her shit. An outline of the procedure. The possible risks and complications. The permission she’d granted for medical student observation. Emergency contact information—Peeta’s name and cell phone number scrawled in Katniss’ uneven hand, one of only two phone numbers she knew by heart. And a handout detailing the aftercare following the procedure, which he pored over intently several times, reading front to back and then back to front as if he couldn’t decide whether the instructions were written in English or Japanese. Christ, he’d probably know more about what to expect from her vagina than she would when she woke back up.

“Thank you,” she said, not at all talking about the clipboard. Her voice was a hoarse whisper, as fragile and weathered as a rocky, crumbling crag falling apart under its own weight.

Peeta looked at her, an emotion she didn’t want to name coloring his eyes the same shade as the Pacific after a summer squall. She could always read his mood by the color of his eyes—she hated that sometimes, knowing him like that. Especially because she always knew when he pitied her, and that was something she never wanted to see from him. And certainly not today.

Not him. And please god, not today.

He reached out, and for a second she thought he was going to hold her hand. Instead his long fingers played with the wristband they’d put on her when she checked in, twirling it around until the label faced him. From his vantage, it would be upside down. No matter. He could still read what it said.

Her name. _Katniss Everdeen_. Her date of birth. _5-08-84_. Her patient ID barcode, a dehumanizing series of black bands reminding her that everyone—and everything—could be reduced to a commodity. And the procedure she was here for, coded into an innocuous string of numbers, lest some judgmental bitch decided she had an opinion she felt entitled to share about it. ( _And wasn’t that how it always went with judgmental bitches?_ ). But the label might as well have said it—might as well have advertised the procedure Katniss was there for in bright neon lights, or painted in smoke across the sky. _Dilation and Curettage_. She was there to be opened up, to have some part of herself irrevocably hollowed out, and there didn’t seem much point in trying to hide that.

The door to the surgery opened again, and this time a nurse, a lumpy, sallow-faced blonde with wan blue eyes, looked up from a clipboard she was holding in her hands. “Katniss Everdeen?”

She swallowed thickly at the sound of her name, tasting the stomach acid that had lurched from her esophagus into the back of her throat. If only she could drink something. Water. Alcohol. Bleach. If only she could run away. Get out of here. Run to the edges of the Earth. She stood up and hitched her purse strap over her shoulder, nervously smoothing out the oversized shirt that hung on her heavy breasts, concealing her bloated stomach—the burgeoning curves she hadn’t yet begun to appreciate and now never would.

“That’s me,” she said unnecessarily, walking toward the woman, feeling like she'd just volunteered for her own execution.

Peeta stood too, holding out the clipboard to take back with her. Katniss was about to thank him for waiting for her and to tell him she’d see him soon, when the nurse motioned with her hand for him to follow.

“Come on,” she said sweetly. “You two can follow me back here. I’ll get you set up.”

Katniss shot a mortified look back at Peeta, mouthing ‘ _I’m so sorry_ ’ at him, but he shook his head once, pressing his lips into a thin, closed-mouth smile, and placed his hand at the small of her back to urge her on. As Katniss shuffled down the hall, she forced herself to focus on the weight of his hand, the heat and presence of it, pressing on her. Anchoring her to something other than this.

He shouldn’t have to do that for her, but then he always did.

“My name’s Delly,” the nurse chirped over her shoulder in a voice as fake as the potted plants lining the short hallway leading to the obstetrical center’s surgical ward. They passed several doors marked _Embryology_ , _Transfer Room_ , _Ultrasound Room_ , and _Examination Room_ before halting in front of the double doors to the surgical ward. Delly waved her ID in front of an electronic keypad mounted waist-high on the wall, and the doors loudly clicked open, the sound ringing hollowly in the hallway. “I’m going to be taking care of you today, Katniss. I’ll prep you for surgery, and then I’ll see you again in recovery following your procedure.”

At this point it didn’t matter if the Grim Reaper would be taking care of her, but Katniss forced herself to smile at the nurse, hoping the expression passed as appreciative and not pained.

“Where were you guys coming from—did you get into downtown okay?” When neither of them immediately replied, unsure how exactly to begin answering that, Delly glanced at her watch and prattled on, “The one ten was a nightmare this morning. Some car broke down in the left lane. It had traffic backed up for miles. At least you were able to miss morning rush hour, right?”

Perhaps Katniss was supposed to count whatever mercies she could, however small. “Yeah,” she replied, hoping to end the conversation, “traffic was fine.”

They passed a few occupied beds that had been partitioned off with hanging curtains until they came to one at the end of the row.

“You’ll be in here.” Delly gestured to the chair next to the bed and to the coat rack mounted on the wall directly above it. “We’ll bring you back here for recovery too, so feel free to leave all your personal items. They’ll be safe. There are some plastic bags hanging up there for your clothes—”

Peeta turned and, without pause, grabbed one off the rack, clutching it awkwardly in his hand along with the clipboard.

“Oh here, let me take that.” Delly gave one of her dimpled, plasticine smiles and reached out, taking the paperwork from him. She rifled through it briefly, checking that everything was in order. “Great,” she murmured, nodding in satisfaction. Her overly wide blue eyes met Katniss’ again. “Well, let’s get you all situated then, shall we?”

Peeta sank into the bedside chair with a sigh, mussing his wavy blond hair with both hands like he did whenever he was stressed. For a moment he looked much older than his thirty-three years—under the fluorescent lights of the ward, the purple rings beneath his eyes looked like deep bruises, and his skin was ashy and pallid. He looked like hell. And if _he_ looked like hell, she dreaded to think what she must look like. Katniss grimaced, knowing what torture all this must be for him. The poor guy had probably thought he’d get to read a book for a couple hours in the waiting room, zoning out while he pretended he was actually spending the day at the beach, instead of what this was turning out to be—an exclusive front row seat to the Rocky Horror Uterus Show.

There was no pretending his way out of this.

Katniss scanned the items that had been placed on the hospital bed for her. A freshly laundered gown, its thin cotton fabric softened from lord-knows-how-many previous washes. A bright blue, disposable hair cap. And a pair of green socks, wrapped in plastic, with white foam paw prints dotted across the bottom for tread.

“I’ll need you to take everything off, including any jewelry, and put your gown on, opening in the back. As soon as you’re settled in, I’ll get some nice, warm blankets on you. How does that sound?” Delly busied herself as she spoke, fussing with the IV bag hanging on a stand next to the bed, going through whatever mental checklist of items nurses were expected to follow while simultaneously holding their patients’ hands.

“Um… well.” Katniss wiped her sweaty palms on her leggings, trying not to look at Peeta as the panic washed over her. She nodded, not knowing what to say, but accepting she didn’t have a choice in the matter. “Okay.”

“Great. I’ll be _right_ back.”

And then Delly was gone, backing out of the small room and pulling the curtain partition shut in front of her. The decisive whizzing of the hooks as they rolled in their track punctuated her words, brooking no argument, and Katniss stood there for a moment, frozen in panic.

This was really it. The end of the world. And no thin piece of fabric could conceal the yawning cliff in front of her, the hole in the earth that swallowed everything, including all light and all hope.

“Katniss, breathe,” Peeta said, suddenly inches from her. His voice was soft, his touch softer. His hands fell on her shoulders, turning her to face him.

“You shouldn’t have to be here. You—you shouldn’t have to see this,” Katniss whispered frantically. “They—” her eyes glanced at the garments on the bed, then down at the ones she was expected to take off now. In front of him. “They think you’re the father.”

“So?” The petulance in his voice surprised her, and she looked up at him, taking in the stubborn set of his jaw. He was flexible in so many things—an agreeable, amiable, easygoing, sweet guy. But there was precious little point arguing with him when his jaw looked like _that_. “I don’t give a shit what they think, and neither should you. Let them think I got you pregnant. Either way, I’m not going anywhere, alright?”

She nodded and licked her dry lips, forcing herself not to melt into his arms. Peeta was doing enough for her by being here—he shouldn’t have to carry her weight too. She had to keep standing on her own.

“Thank you,” she said again.

He sighed and opened the plastic bag in his hands. “I wish you’d stop saying that. Now c’mon. Let’s get you dolled up in that sexy cap and gown.”

She couldn’t help but meet his smile with one of her own, even now when she so acutely wanted to die. He always said the right thing, somehow. And at exactly the right time.

“Alright, but you’re going to have to turn around.”

He arched an eyebrow and gave her a small, crooked grin. “What? You got something in there I haven’t seen before, Everdeen?” The fair skin of his face flushed pink as soon as he said it, his innocent, teasing remark taking on another, darker meaning, because the last thing either of them wanted to think about was what Katniss had _in there_.

“Sorry. I just wanted to make you smile. I shouldn’t be making dumb jokes.” He turned around to face the wall, his arms crossed so tightly against his chest his shoulders pitched forward, as if someone had punched him so hard he had buckled inward from the force of it.

“It’s alright. I’m used to them by now,” Katniss pretended to grumble, but she was too anxious about her immediate crisis—him seeing her like this, vulnerable and exposed—to care about one of his jokes falling flat. She dropped her purse next to him on the floor, toeing off her ballet flats and kicking them next to her bag, and then with trembling fingers peeled off her leggings and panties at the same time. Making sure her underwear was stowed inside her leggings so he wouldn’t see them, she handed them to him in a wadded up ball. Dutifully, without comment, he dropped them into the clear plastic bag and then jostled the bag at his side, prompting her for her shirt.

She’d never been naked in front of—or even behind—Peeta before. Never in the same room. She hated that today was the day, like this, and she hated that even through her despair and hopelessness, it was still something she had wanted for herself. It wasn’t supposed to be like that between them.

None of this was how it was supposed to be.

She slid her shirt over her head, wanting to chuck it in the trash for what it represented to her. _Maternity_. A cruel joke. Instead she handed it to him, getting it out of her hands as quickly as possible.

“Is that everything?” He moved to snap the bag shut.

 _Shit_.

“No—I ah... have one more thing.”

She reached behind her, unhooking her bra, letting the straps fall down her shoulders. She should have taken it off and given it to him folded inside her shirt. The bra was worse than nothing special—an old standby, some ratty thing she’d been wearing for comfort the past several weeks because it was one of the few that could still hold her swollen breasts. The green satin fabric had pilled at the sides from wear, and the elastic around the band had stretched out over time. It was almost in as rough of shape as she was. At the thought of anyone else seeing it, much less him, she grew embarrassed of herself. For giving up, for failing. For letting it come to this. Nestling one cup inside the other, she walked up to Peeta, stopping a couple inches short of his back so that he couldn’t see her, and opened the bag herself to drop it inside.

“Now that’s everything.”

He exhaled roughly and squeezed the air out of the bag, snapping it shut. “No jewelry?”

She’d never been one for jewelry, and it wasn’t like she had a ring. Peeta knew that, which made it a little weird he’d asked. She supposed he was nervous too. That was more than understandable, considering how an offer to drive a friend to and from surgery had morphed into—whatever the fuck this was.

“Gimme one second,” she told him, picking up the neatly folded hospital gown and slipping her arms into it. It hung loosely on her body, its billowy shape reminding her of the tents they draped over houses that were being fumigated. At least the fabric was soft on her skin—even if it didn’t cover much of it. Katniss sat in the center of the bed and swung her legs onto it, leaning back against the pillow to cover her backside.

Without waiting for the all-clear, Peeta turned to face her and walked to the side of the bed, ripping into the package holding the hospital socks.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” He freed one of the socks and bunched the fabric down, slipping it over her toes.

“I can get that—” Katniss sat up and leaned forward, determined to take care of it herself. “You didn’t sign on to baby me.” Her gown slipped forward, baring her left shoulder and falling below her collarbone, caught between the swell of her breast and her knee, but before she could scramble to push it back, Peeta’s hand was there, sliding the gown back over her shoulder and nudging her to lie down.

“You need someone to take care of you today, and maybe just this once you should actually let someone do it, stubborn ass.”

Katniss grunted in frustration. She was fucking hopeless and helpless, a powerless, broken thing trapped in a body that had betrayed her. Peeta was wrong. It wasn’t about what she needed—it was about what she _deserved_ —

Which was to suffer this alone.

It was the least she could do for the one she couldn’t save.

Peeta fussed with the sock on her left foot, straightening it so that the treads rested squarely across the sole of her foot, before he slipped the right one on. Katniss’ skin pebbled, either from the cold air on her bare legs or the warmth of his touch, she couldn’t be sure—the two sensations were so at war with each other they were indistinguishable. Seeing her goosebumps, Peeta rubbed one of her shins briskly.

“We’re all set,” he called out. His words were like a conjuring spell, summoning Delly from the other side of the curtain. The nurse reappeared with Beetlejuice-like relish.

“Are you all ready to get toasty warm?” The nurse dropped a couple thick blankets on the bed, tucking Katniss in with shocking speed and proficiency, folding her into the covers with the ease of someone assembling a burrito. It wasn’t lost on Katniss that she was being swaddled like a baby—perhaps there was some instinct humans never lost to be comforted by being squeezed and choked to within an inch of their lives.

Having checked that item off her list, the nurse moved to the cabinet next to the bed and began pulling out all the materials she needed to get Katniss hooked up to her IV.

“Do you have an arm you prefer?” she asked, pulling on her latex gloves and turning Katniss’ right arm over to inspect her veins. Delly pushed down with her index finger on the tender flesh at the crook of her elbow, pressing at one of the deep blue veins webbed beneath her skin.

“No. That—that arm’s fine,” Katniss managed to mumble. The air in the room had taken on a thick sheen, like a layer of grease had oozed into it, floating atop everything. Her head fell to the side to look at Peeta, wondering how he could still breathe when the air looked like _that_.

He stood up, holding the surgical cap in his hands, and came to the side of the bed.

“This is going to be tight,” Delly said as she tied the tourniquet.

Then there was the smell of alcohol, the cold drag of the antiseptic wipe on her skin. And through the film in the air, there was Peeta. The smell of sweet and savory things that always seemed to cling to him. The way he loomed over her bedside, a shadow haloed by the overhead lights. These things became the whole of her existence.

“Let’s see how you rock this look,” Peeta said, lifting Katniss’ head enough to slip the cap on for her.

“A little poke,” Delly warned.

“Just like I thought,” Peeta sighed, stooping down low enough for Katniss to see each and every one of the faded freckles spattered across his nose and cheeks. He even had one on the tip of his nose—just a shade darker than the rest of his skin, so faint she’d never noticed it before and regretted that it was now, in this exact moment, when she finally had. Now it would always remind her of today. “It would look better on me,” he whispered, smiling devilishly at her. “Don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I guess it would bring out the color of your eyes… Lord knows you could use all the help you can get in the looks department.” She couldn’t help but let out a weak laugh. Anything would look better on Peeta—or nothing. A cardboard box would look good on him. Katniss glanced at the clothes he was wearing—loose-fitting jeans speckled with paint, a simple gray t-shirt, and a button up flannel shirt, left open with the sleeves rolled up over his forearms, and even now, in this hideous place, undoubtedly wearing whatever clothes he’d found on his bedroom floor that morning, she thought he looked runway ready.

Bullshit aside, he’d always been a league ahead of her.

“Hold still a little longer,” Delly said, her tone patient and gentle. “I just need to get you taped up now.”

Peeta glanced at the nurse for a fraction of a second as she worked on Katniss’ IV, his easy smile sliding off his face. He took Katniss’ left hand and held it against his chest. She could feel his heart beating strong and steady, if a little fast.

“It’s going to be okay, you know,” he said.

He didn’t sound like he believed it, which was fine because when Katniss nodded in reply, she didn’t mean it either.

“There you go,” Delly chirped, as oblivious as a canary trapped in a coal mine, unaware she was surrounded by death. “You may feel a cold sensation in your arm, but it’ll pass.”

Peeta brought Katniss’ hand up to his lips and gave it a light kiss. The heat from his breath fanned across her skin, spreading and crawling along her arm, winding its way to her spine and lodging there. When he held her hand, there was no coldness in this world, only the warmth he brought to it.

She turned her head and looked at the nurse, whose eyes seemed to have absorbed some of the grease that had been hanging in the air only a moment ago. Delly cleared her throat and looked away. “Let me get you some Tylenol with a little sip of water, and then I’ll send in Dr. Paylor, the anesthesiologist on duty. You’ll love her. She’s excellent at her job.”

Katniss briefly considered whether slipping Dr. Paylor a fifty could persuade her to be less excellent at her job, but instead she nodded and played along. It was a game, one where she pretended to care what happened to her, and in exchange perfect strangers like Delly pretended to care too. She sensed she’d be playing it a while. Might as well get used to it.

When Dr. Paylor, a slight, dark-skinned woman who looked to be about forty, breezed into the partitioned room, Peeta took a seat in the chair along the wall, and Katniss slipped into the perfunctory back-and-forth rapport with the doctor about her medical history. No, she didn’t have asthma. No, she didn’t have any allergies to medication. Yes, she’d been under general anesthetic before. _Yesyesnoyes_ …. The answers all blurred together. Since she gave exactly zero fucks about what might happen to her, she said whatever she needed to say to make the doctor go away, wanting nothing more than to shut her eyes for a few minutes to collect what was left of herself before she went under.

Apparently satisfied with their interview, Dr. Paylor stood to leave, indicating that the doctor who would be performing the procedure, Dr. Aurelius, would be in momentarily to talk.

As soon as the curtain swung shut behind the woman, Katniss touched her abdomen, trying to hold onto the heaviness there, her fingertips lightly moving across her stomach to map out and memorize the pulling feeling inside of her that signified she wasn’t alone—or at least that she hadn’t been, for a time. For one precious minute the world left her to mother—if there was a man sitting next to her watching, trying to steady his breath, or a crew of nurses and doctors breezing by, readying the operating room for her, they didn’t succeed in entering her consciousness. For one minute, in the darkness behind her closed eyes, there was only herself and what she could never hold in her own two hands.

This time when the curtain whizzed open, an older man—surely somewhere near retirement—walked in and stood at the foot of her bed. Although he wasn’t smiling, his eyes were kind, and each one of the many lines on his face seemed to tell a tale—a thousand stories of crying babies, a thousand stories of crying women.

He didn’t act like he was happy to meet her or that it was another day of sun in La La Fucking Land or that unicorns were about to come prancing out of her vagina to tap dance across a rainbow, and for those reasons she immediately respected the man.

“Katniss,” he said, extending one of his hands to her. The back of it was covered in thick, corded veins, and Katniss took it, holding on for a moment, then let her hand rest gently back by her side so as not to pull at her IV. “I’m Dr. Aurelius,” he continued. “I’ll be performing your surgery today. I’m sorry this has happened to you—I wish we were meeting under different circumstances, liked we’d hoped.”

She looked into the eyes of the man who’d come to sweep up the shards of her broken dreams, thankful such a person existed. Usually, she despised owing people favors—hated feeling weak or indebted to anyone—but there was no way she could have handled this on her own without breaking too. She remembered how her mother had been when she’d lost her baby sister. A ghost of a woman, she’d flitted from the couch to her bed and then back to the couch for the better part of a year. There’d been a time when Katniss had thought herself better than her mom, too strong to be pulled into the black hole of grief. Now she knew better. She was made of the same shoddy material.

Nodding her acknowledgment, she remained silent so that the doctor could continue.

“The procedure is going to be fast—no more than five minutes or so. It will actually take longer to sedate you and for you to regain consciousness than the D&C itself. We won’t be making any surgical incisions today—we’ll dilate your cervix and then use suction to remove all fetal tissue. The surgery is a bit of a misnomer now—we once used a tool called a curette, which is kind of like a bended spoon.” He made a gesture with his hand, puppeting the shape of the instrument. “Then using the curette, tissue would be scraped away from the uterine wall. But with suction, the process is gentler, and the plan is to take as little tissue as is necessary and have you pass the rest naturally to minimize the risk of scarring. At the end of the procedure I’ll perform an ultrasound to confirm all fetal tissue has been removed. Do you have any questions about this?”

Katniss shook her head, wishing it would all be over, or that it had never begun. “No, I understand.”

The doctor sank onto the end of the bed as if what he had to say next was too costly to remain standing. Maybe it was smoke and mirrors, a rehearsed show of pity, but it felt sincere to her. “As far as ultrasounds go, we offer them to every patient... if you’d like confirmation before the procedure, that is. I wanted to tell you, though, that I’ve reviewed your ultrasounds and agree with my colleagues. I find the evidence conclusive. You’re ten weeks and two days along, and at your last scan two days ago the fetus no longer had a heartbeat and was still measuring at eight weeks. But if you’d like additional reassurance before we—”

“No.” She took a deep, steadying breath and then made herself say it out loud, the thing she knew from the moment she saw the bright, red smear of blood on the toilet paper. “I understand I’ve lost the baby.”

The doctor nodded, most likely appreciating that she’d saved five minutes of his day. He could drink a coffee in five minutes. Check his email. Maybe take a shit. Even suction out a dead baby. As it turns out, five minutes could be a monumental amount of time in a person’s day.

“Alright, Katniss. I’ll see you shortly, and I’ll be back again to talk to you after the procedure.” He patted her foot over the blanket, the paternal _pat pat_ that’s usually accompanied by a “that’s a good girl,” and then he walked away, through the curtain and into the void where she’d meet him.

He wasn’t gone a minute when the nurse returned—this place was like a shooting gallery of medical staff. “It’s time to go,” she said. “I’ll have you stand up. I’ll carry your IV bag for you so you can hold your gown closed. We’re going to head over to the bathroom to weigh you and have you empty your bladder, and then we’ll head into the operating room together.”

As the nurse unhooked the IV bag from its stand, Katniss sat up and struggled to peel the bedsheets off her using just her left arm so that her gown wouldn’t slip down on her. Peeta, who had done his best to blend into the furnishings and hadn’t spoken a word since the anesthesiologist had entered the room, now bolted up from his spot on the chair. “Here,” he offered, grabbing the sheets and moving them aside for her so that she could hold onto the back of her gown. “Let me help you with that.”

She swung her feet over the side of the bed, but before she could lower herself to the floor, Peeta’s right arm had wrapped itself around her waist, doing the work for her. His hand grazed her back, his fingers grasping onto the bare skin where her gown still gaped open. Unused to being touched, her skin tingled where his hand rested, like someone had rubbed menthol into the flesh.

“You didn’t have to do that—I’m fine,” Katniss lied.

His arm fell away from her waist, and he tucked his hands in his jeans pockets, apparently more interested in studying the narrow slice of floor between them than looking at her.

“So... I guess I’ll ah… see you on the other side,” she said to get him to look back up at her, hoping her tone would pass as joking.

But she didn’t fool him. When his eyes finally met hers, they reflected everything she felt. They were the color of a tombstone in the moonlight.

He hesitated for a moment, shooting a glance over her shoulder at the nurse standing behind her, before he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, one of his large hands cradling the back of her head to his chest. His arms—god, his arms. When they were curled tightly around her, she felt protected and treasured, like nothing could touch her. And somehow the tighter they held her, the easier she could breathe.

He murmured into her neck, quietly so only she could hear, “When I see you again, it’s going to be a different world.”

She burrowed her face deeper into his chest, soaking up his warmth like a sun-starved weed grasping for a place in the light, and fought back the sobs that threatened to wrack her body. He understood implicitly that this was an apocalypse for her. And yet there he was, somehow speaking of a future she couldn’t see through all the smoke and ash. How perfectly, typically Peeta of him.

He held her as the world died around them. A minute or an age, it didn’t matter. There was never enough time.

Too soon, the nurse interrupted, her voice gentle but insistent. “Sir, while Katniss is in surgery, we’ll have you sit in the waiting room.” Peeta pulled away, looking as reluctant to go as Katniss was to see him leave, and as galled as if he’d just been asked to tear out one of his own ribs with his bare hands. “I’ll come get you as soon as she’s back here,” Delly reassured him. The nurse opened the curtain for him, and Peeta walked through, turning to look back at her one last time.

“You’ve got this,” he said. But his eyes were the color of regret.

As the doors of the surgical ward closed behind him, Delly indicated Katniss should follow her across the room to the lavatory. The nurse weighed her and then hooked her IV bag on a stand in the bathroom, excusing herself so that Katniss could have privacy to use the bathroom. After a couple minutes, she shuffled out, awkwardly holding her gown closed with one hand and her IV bag with the other.

Delly took the bag from her and gestured down a short hall—it couldn’t have been more than ten feet or so long—that ended with a pair of wide doors. “We’re alllllmost there, sweetie. Follow me right this way.”

So Katniss followed.

Through the doors, she walked into the operating room. The periphery was lined with unfamiliar equipment, and in the center of the room, beneath looming overhead lights, was a gynecological operating table draped in a sterile covering.

It looked like something out of a horror movie.

The table was actually three-quarters of a table, the bottommost part nothing more than a pair of stirrups and a drape covering a stainless steel pan. The bed had two extensions on its side, one for each of her arms, with attached straps to hold her down. Another nurse stood by the side of the bed, holding a clear plastic face mask in her hands, and several other nurses scurried about, readying things for the surgery.

The only thing the room was missing was a chainsaw.

“We’ll need you to sit here,” Delly said, pointing to a spot on the table just above the covered pan. “And you can lay your head back on the pillow. Once you’re lying down, we’ll have you scooch down the table a little.”

Katniss didn’t ask why or how far—she knew what the pan was for.

Delly passed the bag of saline across the table to the nurse holding the mask, who then hung it on a stand and carefully straightened out the attached tubing so as not to pull on Katniss’ IV catheter. As soon she laid down and slid the requisite couple inches down the table, a couple nurses lifted her legs into the stirrups. Her legs began to tremor in the stirrups, and one of the nurses smiled at her comfortingly and rubbed her knee. The nurse looked up at the other one across the table, silently communicating something to her, and within seconds a warm blanket was draped across her body.

“Katniss, these are going to feel cold on your skin at first,” Delly said, holding up two circular adhesive patches. “Dr. Paylor likes to monitor patients’ heart rates by EKG.” The nurse placed the pads on Katniss’ chest, but the cold sensation barely registered for her. There was too much—too much going on. Too many people under those harsh lights, in this sterile, cold place, talking to each other, buzzing around like wasps in a hive speaking a language Katniss didn’t understand.

“She’s one-oh-eight today,” Delly said to Dr. Paylor, who nodded and turned around to enter her weight into her computer.

The nurse holding the mask looked down on her and gave a kind smile. Her eyes were the color of dune grass, her pale skin the color of sand. “I’m going to put this on you now, Katniss. This is oxygen.”

The mask fit snugly over her nose and mouth, and then she felt her arms moved outward onto the extensions of the bed. Hands strapped her down, the weight of the room pulling her down, down, but she looked ahead at the lights hovering above her. They were so bright they blinded her, making her eyes water, but Katniss refused to blink her tears away.

Her legs were splayed wide—her arms splayed even farther—but she shrank inside herself, somewhere they couldn’t touch.

They needed to know that she was awake. That she didn’t want any of this. That all she’d wanted was someone to love and to keep her baby safe. She kept her eyes open as witness, as warning, as the one act of resistance she had left.

She kept her eyes open.

Open.

And then—

 

* * *

 

When she woke up again she felt empty, and as soon as she registered this, the tears began leaking out of the corners of her eyes in time to the dripping of her IV—a slow, measured progression of something gained, then something lost.

“Hey, you’re awake,” she heard someone say. A man. His voice was deep and soft, coating her in warmth like a well-worn blanket. The taste of his voice was familiar, habitual. It seeped into her body, instantly settling in all the empty spaces between her bones like it knew where to fit. This man was known to her, and needed.

“You’re back,” a woman rasped, surprise catching on her rusty and scratched voice like a scrap of fabric caught on an old, bent nail.

“Of course I am. Where else was I gonna be?” Something scraped noisily on the floor, and then a man appeared over her, the unruly strands of his tousled blond hair glowing in the light. An angel. No. Now she recognized who he was.

“Peeta.”

As the woman said his name, she remembered who she was and what, exactly, had been taken from her. Another drop of saline made its way to her arm, and another tear leaked out of her eye, dragging a scorching path across her skin.

“The baby. I—” Her hand touched her tender abdomen, making certain. “I lost it.”

“I know,” he murmured. “I’m so sorry, Katniss.” Peeta wiped her tears away with his thumbs and frowned down at her, considering something. Leaning down, he planted a light kiss to her forehead and then removed the surgical cap for her. “Let’s get this thing off you.” He spoke gently, patiently, the way a parent would speak to their young child as they peeled off their soaking wet clothes after getting caught in the freezing rain. Some child would be so lucky to be born someday and to be able to call him their dad. It was infinitely more than what her baby would have had.

He took her hand, twining his fingers through hers, and gave it a squeeze that was meant to be reassuring. “Are you thirsty? Could you eat something? She left some apple juice and graham crackers for you.” He gestured to the far side of her bed, where the snacks were sitting on top of a short metal cabinet. “Said I could give them to you if you wanted. What do you think?” He didn’t wait for her reply before releasing her hand and moving around the foot of her bed to the other side. He grabbed the can of apple juice, which already had a straw in it, and held it in front of her, his fingers keeping the straw in place a couple inches from her mouth.

For weeks the nausea had been nearly constant—even after the baby had died she’d spent hours camped on the floor in front of the toilet, knowing she’d need it in a hurry—but the thought of apple juice didn’t instantly make her want to vomit, so Katniss leaned forward and took a small sip. “Mmm, that’s nice,” she said, surprised by how badly she wanted more. She took another pull, the juice slurping loudly in the straw, and Peeta grinned down at her.

“Ready for some dry-ass crackers now?”

“I’ve been waiting my whole life for some dry-ass crackers.” She tried to smile back at him, but another tear leaked out of her eye.

Wordlessly, he wiped it away and then snapped off a bite of the cracker, holding it to her mouth. “Open up.”

“Peeta,” she sighed, “I’m perfectly capable of—”

He arched an eyebrow at her, his jaw doing _that thing_ again. “C’mon, I said open up.”

Katniss scowled, but leaned forward to take the cracker from him with her mouth. “Your bedside manner leaves a little something to be desired,” she half-grumbled as she gnawed on what tasted like a cinnamon-flavored clump of sawdust in her mouth.

He chuckled and broke off another piece of cracker, holding it front of her exactly like he’d done for the last bite. “So what you’re telling me is that I don’t have a brilliant career as a male nurse ahead of me.”

Katniss tried to laugh at the thought of Peeta trading in his disheveled, paint-splattered clothes for pristine nurse’s scrubs, but it came out a cough instead, her throat dry and scratchy from the anesthesia.

Peeta’s look of amusement changed to concern in the fraction of a second. “Are you okay? Here, have some of this—” He offered her the apple juice. “Or do you want some water?”

She shook her head and gave him a weak smile. “Apple juice is fine. Thanks, though.”

This was a new dance for them, one where their feet moved carefully around the rubble of her defenses. Before the D&C she had been humiliated for him to see her weak and broken, but now—she had no choice. She was hollowed and gutted, and without him she had no substance at all, nothing left that tethered her to this place.

Dutifully, she polished off the packet of crackers, and after she took one last loud, gurgling sip of juice, Peeta held up the empty can and swished it around.

“Want me to hit them up for another one of these?”

“No, that’s okay.” Another tear leaked out, which Peeta wiped away again without comment. “I think I’ll just have something at home later on.”

“Sounds fair to me. I can make you whatever you want... provided you have food in your fridge. Otherwise, I’ll be making you a packet of ketchup with a side of baking soda.” He tossed the empty can in the trash and gingerly made his way around her bed, careful not to knock it as he passed, and back to the chair, which he picked up and moved closer to the bed.

Usually, Katniss would have something clever to say back to him, a cynical remark or witty rejoinder that would spar with his brand of playful teasing. That was how they’d always been, and she was certain it must be the main reason he’d stuck around all these years—good fencing partners being hard to find. But there was no spark left to her now, only ash. She lay there silently, her head drifting drowsily to the side so she could study him. He sat there silently too, studying her back. Without discussion, their hands met, his thumb running back and forth along hers, each stroke a way of telling her without words that he was there with her.

They were like this when the nurse came back to check on Katniss’ vitals. They were still like this when Dr. Aurelius came back to give her a report of the surgery.

The doctor walked through the curtain, pausing at the foot of her bed and looking between the two of them sympathetically.

“How are you feeling, Katniss?"

 _Never better. Like a million bucks. Like I’m king of the fucking world_. She settled on, “I’m okay.”

The doctor nodded. “That’s good to hear. Well, as I anticipated, the surgery went well. I removed a minimal amount of uterine tissue, so you should expect to have some bleeding. I noticed one clot in particular on the ultrasound that you’ll pass over the next couple days or so. As you requested, we were able to collect the fetal tissue for karotyping, so when you follow up with your regular gynecologist, Dr.…” He flipped through the clipboard in his hands, scanning her medical record for her doctor’s name.

“Lyme,” Katniss answered for him.

“Sandy’s your primary doctor? Excellent. Well, she’ll be able to give you a report with the DNA results when you meet with her in a couple weeks, and based off those she’ll talk to you about your plans moving forward. Delly will be reviewing the instructions for your aftercare, including the prescriptions we’ll be sending home with you and what to look out for as far as complications go, but did you have any questions for me specifically?”

Katniss shook her head, afraid that if she said anything she’d fall to pieces. She knew the collapse was imminent, but she didn’t want it to happen here. Not with so many eyes and ears around to witness it. When it happened, she wanted to be alone.

Dr. Aurelius patted her leg the same as he had earlier, shooting another look between Katniss and Peeta. “I’m so sorry for your loss. I hope to see you guys in here again soon for a much happier reason, okay?”

She flinched at the doctor’s words, her grief dueling with mortification. She didn’t think she’d ever find the strength to try this again. She’d just lost a baby. It was heartless, wasn’t it, to want another when she couldn’t protect the one she’d made? And on top of the mountain of grief she’d just been handed was the embarrassment of knowing her feelings for her friend were obvious to total strangers. Did Peeta know too? And was that why he was here, because he felt sorry for her?

It always seemed to come back to pity with him.

Sensing her discomfort, Peeta answered for them, playing the game. “Thank you, doctor. We appreciate you saying that.”

The curtain was still swaying from Doctor Aurelius’ departure when Katniss began to apologize. “I’m so sorry they think that—”

He shrugged it off. “I already told you I don’t care.”

“But,” Katniss looked at their entwined hands, “we’re not together. It’s… I don’t know… embarrassing, isn’t it?”

Peeta released her hand, wiping his palm off on his thigh. Her skin felt cold and clammy from the loss of his touch, so she brought her hand to her stomach for comfort—until she remembered there was no one there either.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not meeting her eye. “You’re dealing with so much today, and I’m supposed to be helping, not making it worse. I’ll be… better.”

It was easy sometimes, with such a good-looking man, to forget about his emotional baggage, the fact that he carried deep-seated feelings of inferiority from a lifetime of being told he was never good enough by the one person who was supposed to love him unconditionally. The damage mothers could do with their bodies, their words.

“Hey, I didn’t mean it like that.” She poked him in the shoulder with her pointer finger until he looked at her with eyes the color of a torn steel hull sinking slowly beneath the ocean. She, the destroyer of everything, had done that too. “Give me a break, Peeta. Like you’re something to be embarrassed of. As for you being better,” she waved her hand dismissively, “it’s impossible.”

“Yeah, why’s that? I’m that far gone?” He gave a rueful smile, trying to make light out of an impossibly heavy morning.

“No.” She shrugged a shoulder and tried to smile back at him. Half her mouth cooperated, one corner ticking upward. “Because you’re already the best.” Her pulse sped up as she prepared to say what needed to come next, and she was grateful she was no longer hooked up to a heart monitor. How mortifying that would have been, the telltale beeping giving her innermost secrets away, dragging them all out into the open against her will. “Look, it’s not embarrassing so much as it’s…” She carefully considered her next word, settling on the only one that came to mind, “...inappropriate.”

“Inappropriate? We’re in an _obstetrician's_ office, Katniss. I think they’re kind of used to the idea that men and women have sex, and that sometimes, when men and women have sex they make babies. I don’t think anyone here is thinking twice about it or—”

“I mean,” she said, quietly cutting him off, “that _you_ might not care what anyone thinks, but if she knew what other people were assuming, that you and I… well, _you_ might not care, but I think Madge would.”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and covered his mouth with his hands. Looking at her intently, he shook his head slowly. “Katniss, I haven’t said anything—”

The nurse’s offensively chipper voice piped in, interrupting whatever he was about to say. “How are you guys doing in here?” She poked her head inside the curtain, her sanitized smile as bright as the overhead lights. When Katniss grumbled that she was fine, Delly came into the room, holding an almost comically tiny plastic cup in one hand, and stood next to her, offering it to her.

Two tiny white pills rested inside of it. The first one promised forgetfulness, the second one oblivion.

“This is oxycodone,” the nurse explained. “Would you like any? You can have one to two pills every four hours, as needed, for pain.”

Mutely, Katniss took the cup from the nurse and rested it on her stomach. Delly grabbed the paper cup of water from the top of the cabinet and gave it to her, watching as Katniss swallowed down the pills.

“She’ll be able to take more if she’d like anytime after six o’clock this evening,” Delly told Peeta, speaking across Katniss as if she were already passed out. “I’ve called in the prescriptions to the pharmacy downstairs, so you can pick those up as you leave here, and I’ll be giving you a sheet of instructions that will include what complications and adverse reactions to look out for, as well as the times when she’ll be able to take more of her meds, and at what doses.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll keep an eye on her.” He gave Katniss a crooked little smile, speaking to her in their own language they’d developed over the years. “Or two eyes, as often as I can spare them.”

Delly looked down at Katniss. “You’re going to be drowsy today, and you might feel dizzy or lightheaded, possibly also nauseous. Try to eat lightly until you know how you feel—nothing greasy that might upset your stomach—and take it easy. Don’t drive or try to do anything strenuous. Don’t lift anything heavy. Don’t make any major life decisions, and whatever you do, don’t go to any casinos and put it all on red, okay?”

Katniss gave her a weak smile to humor her. “Okay.”

“Great. If it’s alright with you, I’m going to take your IV out now, okay?”

She nodded, eager to see it go.

While the nurse gathered her materials—gloves, gauze, tape, antiseptic wipes, all the usual suspects—she continued to go over the release instructions. “Let us know if you develop a fever over a hundred degrees or if you have any difficulty urinating. If you have any unusual swelling in your legs or any chest pain, let us know too. And to avoid infection, don’t use tampons and abstain from sex for at least two weeks. Use pads for the bleeding—I’ve left you one right here to wear home—and if you saturate more than one pad per hour, give us a call.”

Katniss watched vacantly as the nurse withdrew the catheter from her arm and pressed a wad of gauze to the wound, barely able to concentrate on what Delly said. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. She just wanted to get out of here and crawl into her own bed, where she’d hopefully spend the rest of her pathetic life.

“Okay, you’re all taped up. You can get dressed now, but be very careful standing because you may be dizzy from the anesthetic, okay?” She looked at Peeta meaningfully. “You may want to help her with this.”

Peeta stood up, wiping his palms on his pants, and moved the chair back to its place against the wall. He placed Katniss’ bag of clothes on the seat, then came back to the bedside, holding her hand tightly. His hand was sweaty, his eyes wide. It was one thing to sit passively and watch all of this unfolding, Katniss knew. It was another thing to be responsible for what happened next. Yet another thing he hadn’t signed on for and was stuck with.

“Here’s your pad,” the nurse said, placing it on the bed. “And when you’re all dressed, I’ll get you a disposable hot compress for the car ride home. If you have an electric heating pad, it’ll be your new best friend for the next couple days.” She gestured to Peeta. “With the exception of this guy, that is. I have the feeling he’s going to take good care of you.” She gave him a smile that seemed sincere—the kind she’d probably give him if she saw him in a bar—and then did a cursory survey of the room, making sure all was in order. “I’ll leave you to it then. When you’re all dressed, you can open the curtain, and I’ll come back with your compress and discharge papers.”

After she’d gone, Katniss looked warily at Peeta. “I’m kind of afraid to move.”

“Here, let me help. Can you sit up on your own?”

Slowly, Katniss sat upright, the world shifting to the right over and over, as if propelled forward by the movement of a second hand on a clock. _Tick tock. Tick tock_. Closing her eyes, she pressed her palm to her forehead, willing it to stop. _Make it stop. Make it stop_. When she finally reopened them, Peeta gripped her lightly by the upper arms, his fingers squeezing her through the thin fabric of her gown.

“Drop your legs over the side of the bed and start to lower yourself down.”

Katniss frowned, feeling the cramping in her abdomen even through the pain medication. There was going to be blood on the bed, she knew it. It was one thing for him to see her in pain—but he was going to see her bleed, and that violated every last rule of self-preservation there was.

“It’s okay. I won’t let you fall,” he said, mistaking her hesitation for lack of faith.

“No…” She moved her legs slowly, sitting on the edge of the bed. Now her face was inches from his. His hands were on her arms, his body a wall in front of her, his eyes seeing right through her, right _into_ her. She looked away. It was too much, the way he was looking at her when she was torn open like this. “It’s not that,” she explained. “I’m ah… bleeding. There’s going to be blood. I don’t know how much. Maybe a lot.”

“It’s okay. Don't worry about that.” He held her as she lowered herself gingerly to the ground, keeping his hands rooted to her until he was satisfied she wouldn’t keel over. Then he turned around and rustled through the bag of her things, grabbing her leggings.

Katniss looked anxiously behind her at the bed, where a blood stain the size of a basketball had spread across the linen, and then watched in horror as Peeta peeled her underwear out of her leggings and moved toward the bed to fetch the pad the nurse had laid there. He held the pad like he’d never seen one in his life, figuring it out like it was a complicated jigsaw puzzle. Opening its plastic wrapping, he quickly assessed it, removing the adhesive backing to nestle the pad inside her underwear.

“No, let me,” she begged, taking her panties from him. “There’s… there’s blood,” she whimpered, her knees knocking and stomach clenching in agony that it was him—Peeta—seeing her like this. She fought the primal, animalistic urge to cover up the stain, to throw a blanket on it— her own body, whatever she could find—so that he wouldn’t see it.

His hands gripped her arms, not ungently. “Katniss.”

She clutched her panties in her hand, staring over her shoulder at the stain, refusing to meet his eye.

“Katniss, it’s a hospital. It’s nothing they haven’t seen before.”

“But you. I don’t want you…” She swallowed with effort—her throat was so goddamn dry—but she couldn’t complete her thought.

He understood her anyway. “I don’t care about seeing your blood. It’s seeing you cry that fucking kills me.” Grabbing the blankets, he tossed them over the stain. “There you go,” he said softly. “Don’t think twice about it. Now let’s get you dressed and get you home and back in your own bed.”

She bent down to step into her panties, but her gown began to slip down over her shoulders, and she stumbled, feeling dizzy and weak.

He pushed the fabric back for her. “Hold onto me with one hand,” he said, “and I’ll hold the gown for you.”

Carefully, she stepped into her underwear, pulling them up, and once they were on, the two of them repeated the process for her leggings.

Peeta reached into the bag, pulling out her bra.

“No,” Katniss blurted, embarrassed for him to even touch it. Why did there have to be embarrassment now, along with everything else? How much could one person take? She reached out and grabbed it from him, clutching it tightly in her fist. “I’ll just... go without. I can put it in my purse.”

He held his hands up like he’d been caught robbing a bank, asking the cops not to shoot. “As you wish, Buttercup.” He stooped down and grabbed her purse, unzipping it for her.

“Thanks,” she said, stuffing the bra in as far as it would go. Her groggy mind scrambled for an excuse to justify her outburst, something that went beyond her injured remnant of pride. “It’ll be easier for me to get dressed without it.”

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with going commando.” He zipped her purse back up and set it down again next to the chair. “I do it all the time,” he added with a quiet chuckle. He took out the last garment that was in the bag—her oversized shirt—and, crinkling up the plastic bag, which he casually tossed onto the bed, he said, “Here you go.” He tugged the shirt over her head, pulling it down over her shoulders and around her torso to cover her up.

Katniss pulled the gown off from beneath her shirt and then threaded each of her arms through her sleeves, adding the discarded gown to the messy pile on the bed.

There. She almost felt human.

...Almost.

She acknowledged the possibility that she may never really feel human again.

“You wanna wear those socks out of here?” Peeta pointed down to the hideous things on her feet.

“Oh god, no.” She shook her head, wanting them out of her life as soon as possible.

“Alright, you got it. Take a seat.” Peeta gestured to the chair, and once Katniss sat down in it, he opened the curtain to her room and then kneeled down on the ground in front of her, taking them off for her.

“Peeta, I can—” Katniss protested weakly, watching the world do its newfound trick of ticking and tocking clockwise.

“You can do a lot of things,” he said, slipping her ballet flats on for her. Grabbing her purse, he slid the strap onto his shoulder and stood up. “You’re one of the most capable people I know. So me helping you isn’t about what you can or can’t do. It’s you allowing me to take care of you on a shit day because it’s a shit day for me too and we’re in this together. It’s about what I want to do, and you’re a good enough friend to allow it. Capiche?” He held out his hand to her. “So let me take you home, okay?”

She sank back in the chair, wilting like a flower in a vase without water, but she placed her hand in his. His touch meant nothing but friendship. She knew that. It never had and never would, but what he offered her was given freely, unconditionally, and wholeheartedly. That was how he was, loving openly. So unlike her in every way. So much better than she was or could ever have hoped to be.

He helped her up and then brought his arm around her shoulders, pulling her into a one-armed hug. Katniss buried her head in his chest, molding herself to the hollow space in the crook of his arm, nuzzling her face into his flannel shirt. The fabric was soft from wear and warm from the heat of his body and smelled like detergent and the ineffable essence that was Peeta. Beneath the fabric, she could feel his unyielding muscle, solid and firm. He was so much stronger than she was—he wouldn’t let her fall, despite the fact she already had long ago.

“I could live a hundred lifetimes and not deserve you,” she confessed.

She felt the rumble in his chest as he chuckled softly. “So says the oxycodone.”

“No, I mean it.” She smacked his chest— _meant_ to smack his chest, anyway—but instead pressed her palm against it, feeling his heart beating through his shirt. It was important for him to know and understand that even at the best of times and in her most lucid state of mind, this was a fundamental truth.

“Well, okay,” he relented. “Maybe you really mean it, but it doesn’t make it any truer. Now let’s get out of here, huh?”

They walked together, Peeta’s broad hand gripped around her shoulder, holding her close, until they reached the nurse’s station at the end of the row of beds. Delly looked up from her computer, her pale eyes glowing almost clear from the white light of the monitor.

“Oh, look at you up and about! Here, let me get your paperwork together for you.” She shuffled around a few sheets of paper, tapping them on the edges to neatly line them up, and then slipped them into a bright green translucent envelope. “You’ll need to hand this to the front desk as you check out.” She handed the folder to Peeta and then grabbed a separate packet of papers. “These are for you to take home. They go over the possible complications we’ve discussed, things to look out for, that sort of thing. The top page lists out when you’re able to give her more meds, so keep that handy.” Peeta rolled up the packet and stuffed it into the back pocket of his jeans, his arm making its way back around Katniss, this time to her waist. “And last but not least—” She swiveled her chair around and grabbed a hot compress from the countertop behind her. “Here you go.” She gave the plastic compress a tight squeeze until something inside of it loudly popped, and then she shook it, her entire body, including her cheeks and arms and breasts, jiggling along with it. “This should last about half an hour,” she explained. “Is that long enough to get you home?”

She asked Peeta, but Katniss nodded, looking at the nurse through half-mast eyes.

“It might take a little longer than that,” she heard Peeta explaining, but his voice seemed to come from somewhere far away—another floor, or another city, maybe from the sky. Her eyes drifted closed, trying to look for him in the darkness.

“Can we have another one just in case we hit any traffic?” a man asked.

“Sure,” a bird chittered. “I know how it is. One of the joys of living in L.A., right?”

 _Why was a bird talking about the traffic?_ Katniss drifted through the darkness, searching for Peeta. She looked for him everywhere—in a place that may have been a jungle, with strange palm trees in wicker baskets with fronds that pulled at the sleeves of her shirt and snagged her hair. She searched for him in a place filled with corridors, sterile and unwelcoming, a rabbit’s warren of misery. Then she was on a sidewalk in a city, where strange people walked by staring at her, their hair in every color of the rainbow, their faces contorted and stretched and pulled in every direction until they didn’t look like people at all, but bastard mutts of what people used to be. They looked at her with pity or disdain, annoyance or contempt, boredom or bemusement. They looked at her with vacant eyes while she looked for him, trying to hold onto a memory. He was nowhere, and he was everywhere—

Just like the one she’d lost.

Her hand drifted to her stomach.

She flew until she landed somewhere—a gray, silent place—and she settled onto something, lying back, stretched out and motionless like a body on a funeral pyre waiting to be burned. There was heat on her stomach—a fire in her belly—and in the darkness, longing and loneliness.

For him. For them. For the family she’d never have.

 

* * *

 

When she came to, Peeta was looking over at her from behind the wheel of his beat up Accord. His eyes were the color of the sky behind him, a sugary, cotton candy blue.

“We’re home,” he said, leaning across the console and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

Katniss groaned and shifted uncomfortably, the compress on her abdomen slipping off and onto the seat. Slowly, she brought her car seat up so that she could look out the window.

Home. A warm word for a cold place.

The lawn of the Spanish-style bungalow was littered with toys. A miniature shopping cart with a plush Elmo crammed into the front seat. An upturned toy lawnmower. A discarded jump rope. A tipped over bottle of bubbles. All strewn about, forgotten by the children who lived there. The front porch was enclosed with matchstick blinds that hung haphazardly, crooked and battered by years of small, curious hands tugging at them.

Seeing the car parked out front, a brown Chihuahua came bolting out of the open front door, barking through the chainlink fence at them.

“That dog’s such an asshole,” Katniss grumbled, wiping crust from her eyes.

Peeta chuckled and unbuckled himself, stepping out of the car. “Yoda!” she heard him call out through the closed doors. “Shut your piehole. It’s just us.”

The dog’s ears quirked in annoyance at its name, its barking growing in pitch and ferocity from someone it believed to be a stranger having the audacity to speak to it.

Peeta came around to Katniss’ side of the car and opened the door for her, reaching over to unbuckle her when her fingers fumbled with the latch. “Alright, let’s get you inside.”

With the way he’d been pampering her, she half-expected him to scoop her up and carry her, but she was pleased when he offered his hand instead and walked with her, holding hands, toward the front gate. The last thing she wanted or needed was for the neighbors to gossip and speculate on what had happened to her. It was bad enough they’d figured out her name when her mail had been delivered to the wrong address.

Yoda yapped and snarled, pulling away from the gate with his hackles raised, as Peeta lifted the metal latch and stepped into the yard.

“I’m gonna dropkick that little fucker if he bites you,” Katniss muttered.

A woman walked out of the front door and onto the porch, her youngest child attached to her hip. One of the little girl’s hands was jammed into her mouth as she sucked on her saliva-soaked, sticky fingers.

“Yoda!” the woman called, impatiently brushing a loose strand of frizzy hair away from her face. “Knock it off and get back inside!” When the dog didn’t immediately listen to her, the woman snapped her fingers together and barked at him, “Now!”

Yoda pinned his ears down, chastised, and skittered back into the house. He shot one last aggrieved look at the intruders before disappearing inside.

“Sorry about that,” the woman said, sounding as tired as she looked. “For as long as you’ve lived here, Katniss, he still hasn’t gotten the message through that thick little skull of his that you belong here too.”

Well, that made two of them.

“No worries, Julie,” Peeta answered for the both of them, knowing Katniss well enough to know she’d have, at best, something surly to say to the woman.

From her place on the porch, Julie looked over Peeta’s shoulder, assessing Katniss, her eyes narrowing at what she saw. “Are you alright? You’re looking a little pale.”

“Never better,” she gritted through her teeth. Julie was a smug asshole, the type who launched into sermons about the health benefits of superfood smoothies every chance she could get. If she knew Katniss had lost a baby, she’d probably try telling her it was because she hadn’t been giving herself daily pitaya juice enemas or some shit like that.

“We ah—tried the new taco truck on Colorado a little while ago,” Peeta lied. “Have you tried it out yet?”

Julie shook her head. “No, we’ve been meaning to, but I’ve been a little off food lately because of this one.” She touched her still-flat belly.

That would make baby number four, if Katniss recalled correctly. Maybe five.

Peeta’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, but he bypassed the landmine Julie had just dropped. “Well, I think we got a touch of food poisoning from it, so you might want to take a pass. Stick to Greasy Sae’s. Anyway, we’re ah—gonna head to the back. But take it easy. Don't let the kids work you too hard.” He smiled sweetly and nodded at the woman as he led Katniss around to the backyard of the house, where the tiny bungalow that she rented from Julie and her husband was tucked away.

It wasn’t much. A little craftsman built in the 1920s, it was a compact, one-bedroom bungalow that oozed personality and lacked practicality. It was freezing in the winter because it had no insulation to speak of, just an ancient radiator that clanked and wheezed every time it was turned on. In the summer, the house became an oven—half of the windows couldn't be opened because the ropes on the pulley windows had rotted and had never been replaced. And as for the plumbing, the toilet couldn’t even handle flushing paper without backing up. Katniss had been worried about the suitability of the house for raising a family and whether she’d be able to fit into it with another person—a baby, no less, and all of the things that babies seemed to need—but as she walked through the door and into the front room, it felt impossibly large now and empty, as derelict and rundown as she was. Without the hope of a family, it was nothing more than a house for one with bare, white walls that amplified and echoed the silence within it.

“We made it,” Peeta said, kicking off his shoes and dropping Katniss’ bag on the couch. He bolted the security door but left the front door open for fresh air. In the distance, traffic rumbled along Eagle Rock Boulevard, and an illicit sprinkler somewhere down the street snickered and sprayed water onto a parched lawn. “Let’s get you settled in bed, okay? I bet you’d like to lay down.” He acted like she’d just run the L.A. marathon, which would have annoyed her if she didn’t feel like she had.

“Sounds like a plan to me.” She slipped off her flats and shuffled into the bathroom, hesitantly closing the door behind her. It was ridiculous, she knew, but she hated the idea of being apart from Peeta, even if it was only for a couple minutes and he was in the other room, five feet away from her. It wasn’t only that she was terrified of what she had to do—although that was true. It was that he had become essential and indispensable to this process, an intrinsic part of her loss. She wanted him there by her, by her side, like he had been the entire morning. She didn’t want to be alone.

But some walks you _have_ to take alone.

She eyed the toilet warily, like a prey looking upon its predator in the moment before the fatal pounce. There would be blood, and there was no telling how much. There would be the inside of her uterus, laid bare, each bright red streak a mark of agony and heartache and pain and defeat. And because the evil was inside of her, there was no avoiding it. No turning away, running and hiding like she so desperately wanted. She had to face it.

Trembling, she pulled her pants down and sat on the toilet before her knees could buckle, and looked down to assess how bad things were.

A little blood. But nothing too bad.

Not yet.

It wasn’t relief she felt so much as the abatement of terror. It receded, pulling back into the shadows, its glimmering white teeth still bared at her. It would strike—it would sink into her, overwhelming her—but for a moment she had a reprieve.

When she emerged from the bathroom Peeta was in her bedroom, straightening the sheets and pulling back the comforter on her bed. Her room, like her life, was nothing special. A queen-size mattress that sat on the floor because she’d never had the inclination to buy a frame or headboard for it. An old dresser she’d picked up from the Salvation Army years ago that now sat between two windows. A couple nightstands that flanked the bed, a set of mismatched lamps on them. And Peeta, standing there looking the most mismatched of all—a beautiful thing in a drab place.

“I got the bed ready.” He rubbed his hands together, his callused palms noisily rubbing against each other in the otherwise silent room. “Is there anything else you need?”

 _A do-over. A new ending. A living child. You_.

“Um...” She deliberated whether to answer, but decided she could use his help more than she could use the leftover shreds of her pride. “A towel. I should ah—probably put one down on the bed. Just in case.” Katniss held onto the dresser with one hand to keep herself from listing to the side, rubbing her forehead with her other to try to hold the world steady. She could feel the Earth spinning on its axis and something like centrifugal force pushing at her, working to heave her over the edge.

Peeta smiled, looking happy she hadn’t fought him on his question. “Okay. I’ll go grab one for you. And some water too.”

She gave him a shaky smile. “Thanks.”

“Anything for you.” He walked past her, putting his hands on her arms to maneuver himself around her in the narrow space between the dresser and the mattress.

He was almost to the door when she remembered. “Oh—and Peeta?”

He turned around, something like hope in his expression. “Yeah?”

“My heating pad too. It’s in the closet, on the shelf below the towels. Could you grab that for me?”

“Right.” He shook his head and smiled. “Of course. I’ll be right back.”

Pulling open the top drawer of her dresser, she rustled through its contents until she found an old pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt she’d had since college, the cotton so worn it had holes in it. Comfort clothes. The same ones she wanted to die and be buried in, ideally. Hearing Peeta rummaging through the linen closet in the hall, she carefully peeled her leggings off and stepped into the oversized sweatpants. She let go of the dresser to tie the drawstring and stumbled backward, landing on her ass on the edge of the mattress.

She yelped in pain, and within seconds Peeta was there, crouched in front of her, looking at her in alarm.

“What happened? Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

She leaned forward, resting her head in her hands, feeling herself bleed from the sudden movement. As her uterus contracted and she uncontrollably seeped, she realized she couldn’t lie to him anymore. It wasn’t just that she didn’t want to—she couldn’t hold the truth in, couldn’t nurture the life of her secrets any longer. It wasn’t the same as telling him she loved him, but whatever he asked, she would answer honestly. Torn open, exposed for him to see, there was no hiding from him anyway. Not when she was like this.

“No,” she amended, whimpering the word.

He wrapped his arms around her, drawing her in, and Katniss buried her face in his neck, her lips pressed to his skin. It felt wrong, being held by him like this, because it felt so impossibly good—so impossibly right.

“Remind me to send Madge an edible arrangement,” Katniss murmured into his neck.

“For what?” He pulled away, looking at her with a serious expression on his face.

 _For being cool with me being in love with her boyfriend_.

Katniss shrugged and gave him the easy part of the truth. “To thank her for loaning me her boyfriend for the day.”

Peeta exhaled loudly and looked away, biting his lower lip in thought.

“What?” Katniss asked, not understanding something. “What are you not telling me? She does know you’re helping me today, right? And—and she’s okay with it?”

He stood up and crossed his arms, assuming a defensive posture. It was bad, then. Whatever he had to say was bad.

Maybe Madge was pissed. Or fuck. Were they—was he going to marry her? Or worse— _fuckfuckfuck_ —had he gotten Madge pregnant? Was Madge going to have his baby? At that thought her leg began to piston up and down, her insides contracting painfully, threatening to fold in on themselves. Peeta was going to have a baby. With Madge. She knew it. She wrapped her arms around her abdomen, waiting for the death blow.

Peeta ran his hands through his hair, gripping the ends anxiously. He exhaled again, sounding winded. “Christ. I’m just going to say it.”

 _Don’tsayitdon’tsayitdon’tsayit_ her eyes silently pleaded. Please don’t ever say it.

He took a deep breath and hurriedly said, “There is no Madge.”

Katniss frowned, her brows knitting together in confusion. She could barely hear him over the pounding of her heart, so she made him repeat himself. “Come again now?”

“I said,” he repeated, slower this time, “there is no Madge.”

She laughed, half from the the absurdity of it, half from relief. “What, like the Easter bunny?”

He gave her a crooked smile, but she could see the tension he was carrying in his body, in the way he held his broad shoulders. Whatever he was trying to tell her, it was serious. He wasn’t actually calling his girlfriend of five years a figment of his imagination.

“Kind of like the Easter bunny,” he said, “except that she’s real. No, what I mean is that there’s no Madge because we broke up.”

Her jaw dropped open in shock, her heart catapulting into her throat and trying to wriggle its way out to the one who owned it. “When?”

Peeta leaned against the dresser, looking down at the old t-shirt Katniss had wadded up on top of it. He took it into his hands and began playing with it absentmindedly. “Oh, I guess about four or five weeks ago.”

“Four or five _weeks_!” She smacked her palms on each side of the mattress. “Why didn’t you say something to me? I mean… what happened? I don’t—I don’t understand.”

His hands gripped her t-shirt tightly as if he were wringing it out, but he didn’t answer.

Katniss pointed to it. “And what did my shirt ever do to you?”

Instantly his hands relaxed, his eyes widening as he realized what he’d been doing. He unwadded it, his eyes narrowing as he read the faded print on the front.

“Hey, is this my Bruins shirt?”

Katniss shrugged. “No, I’ve had that thing since college.”

“Yeah, which is about when it went missing.” He spoke in an accusing tone, but he was smiling, clearly amused. He began inspecting the fabric for something, searching all along the lefthand side of the shirt. “A-ha!” he said, pointing to whatever he’d found. A red splash of paint. _Out, damned spot_. “See. It _is_ my shirt!”

“It _was_ your shirt, you mean.” Katniss reached and snatched it from him, anger taking the place of embarrassment. Today was the worst day of her fucking life, and here he was, teasing her about stealing one of his shirts? “I’ve had it longer than it was ever yours. So, rules of ownership and all that shit.”

Peeta laughed and sank down onto the mattress next to her, nudging her knee with one of his. “C’mon, don’t be mad at me. Please. I’m just teasing. I can see it found a really good home to live out its golden years, so I can finally call off the search party.”

When she didn’t immediately reply, he added, “I’m really glad you took it.”

“I sleep in it sometimes,” Katniss mumbled, half-hoping he wouldn’t hear, her anger toward him dying as quickly and inexplicably as her baby had.

“Were you gonna sleep in it now?”

She nodded, running her fingertips over the fabric, wanting to wear it instead of the horrible shirt she’d only ever associate with the baby she’d lost. She wanted to crawl inside this shirt and remember the girl she’d been the first time she met Peeta Mellark, when the person she was today was nothing but a cursed possibility in an alternate universe that might never happen if she’d only had the courage to open up to him and to act on the things she really wanted as opposed to settling for the things she deserved.

“Okay. I got the towel and heating pad. Let me get those set up for you, and then I’ll tuck you in.” He stood up and grabbed both items, then began busying himself with plugging the pad into the outlet behind her nightstand. “You can swap out the shirts here if you want. I won’t look.”

While his back was turned to her she quickly yanked her shirt off and tossed it across the room, then pulled Peeta’s old shirt on and crossed her arms tightly to her body to conceal the shape of her breasts. The shirt was thin, and her breasts were larger than they had been the last time she wore it, and now, in his presence, she noticed how threadbare the cotton had become, how her nipples traitorously poked at the fabric.

He smoothed the towel out on top of the fitted sheet for her to lie down on, and then glanced at her, his eyes dropping to the shirt and then flitting away.

“It looks good on you,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Takes me right back to college.”

“Me too,” she told him, wishing she could have done things differently back then, could have at least _tried_ to build more than a friendship with him. But considering how her pregnancy had gone, it seemed pretty clear that even when she tried—no matter how hard she tried—she was destined to fuck up. At least she had him like this, for as long as he’d allow it. She hadn’t fucked up their friendship yet.

“Alright, hop in.” He gestured to her bed and took a step back so that Katniss had space to climb in. Once she’d settled herself in with her heating pad stretched across her abdomen, he brought the comforter up to her neck and lightly kissed her forehead. “I still have to grab a glass of water for you. But do you need anything else?”

She shook her head, already feeling the pull of the drugs lulling her back to sleep.

But there were things she needed... she wrestled against her drowsiness, trying to remember what they were. By the time she heard the clinking of the glass being set on her nightstand, she had remembered one of them.

“Peeta,” she said, the sounds slurring together. “What happened with Madge?” Her eyes had drifted closed, but she lay there, listening.

“We can talk about it later if you want,” he said softly.

“You should have told me,” Katniss replied on an exhale, but she may have already been dreaming—she could see him, the way he looked the day they met, standing in the parking lot of the Rose Bowl next to Finnick, his face already so flushed from the sun it almost matched the red plastic cup he was clutching in his hand.

“I know,” he said, the boy taking a sip of his cheap beer and looking at her over the rim, his elbow nudging Finnick in the ribs as he leaned over and said something to him she couldn’t hear over the raucous noise of the tailgate.

“Will you stay with me?” she asked, Gale’s arm wrapping possessively around her shoulders. His beer sloshed over the rim and down the front of her hoodie, and when Gale finally noticed he carelessly laughed and slapped her ass.

The boy looked back at her, his eyes the same shade of azure as the blue on his Bruins t-shirt. “I always have,” he told her.

 

* * *

 

She lay in the darkness, her sore body wrapped in a shroud. Above her she could hear the sound of something scratching, faint and distant, like a shovel piling the last few scoops of dirt over a coffin.

She had wanted to die, but not like this. Oblivion—that’s what she had wanted. Forgetfulness. The absence of pain. But they’d buried her alive, still sentient, and even in the darkness she ached and hurt and bled, so she opened her eyes, preferring life.

When she turned her head, Peeta was sitting next to her on the bed, his back pressed to the wall and knees tucked up, using a pen to scratch something in a steno pad he’d scavenged from her kitchen. In the dusky light filtering through the bedroom window, his pale eyelashes and late afternoon scruff glowed a gold as warm as the setting sun outside. With his faded freckles and unblemished skin, he looked so much like the boy she remembered from almost half a lifetime ago, young and hopeful, untarnished by age and experience. Only the lines that had begun to creep onto his face—almost imperceptible creases across his forehead and feathering out from the corners of his eyes—hinted at the truth. That time left its mark on everyone, leaving no one untouched.

Noticing she was awake, he quickly snapped the note pad shut and placed it on the nightstand next to him, resting the pen on top.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty. Welcome back to the land of the living,” he said, running his hands across his thighs.

Katniss wiped at her eyes, noticing they’d begun to leak tears again. “Thanks,” she croaked, looking up at the water-stained ceiling. “It’s swell to be back.” She laughed weakly, a humorless, broken sound, but when he didn’t join in, she looked over at him.

He had _that_ expression in his eyes again. Like he felt sorry for her. Impatiently, she swiped a rogue tear away.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said.

He swallowed with effort, his face flushing pink, obviously caught. After what seemed like an eternity, he cleared his throat and asked, “Like what?”

She stared at the kidney-bean shaped stain on her ceiling directly above her pillow so that she wouldn’t have to look at him when she answered. The stain reminded her of the ultrasound images of her baby’s placenta—the gestational sac, Dr. Lyme had called it—just another reminder of what she’d lost to haunt her at night.

“Like you pity me,” she finally managed to say.

“ _Pity_ you?” He sounded surprised by her answer, like he’d genuinely expected her to say something else.

“I see it all the damn time. You feel sorry for me. Every time I show up somewhere alone or tell you about some asshole who blew me off or about how I spent my Christmas Fucking Day, you give me that same look. And today… I can see it in your eyes. It’s their color. It changes.” Her hand made its way to her abdomen, resting there. “You were never very good at hiding what you’re feeling.”

“Pity, huh. You think that’s what it is?” She heard his fingers drum against his thighs.

“I _know_ that’s what it is.” Finally, she looked at him, challenging him to disagree with her on that point.

“Because you know me so well,” he said.

“Exactly.”

She could write the motherfucking book on Peeta Mellark.

He smirked, an infuriating expression. “Yeah,” he nodded, picking at an invisible piece of lint on the comforter next to him. “You really got my number, alright.”

“Except for Madge,” Katniss amended, remembering what Peeta had told her before she fell asleep. He’d shocked her on that, and she still didn’t understand what had happened there. “You hid that well.”

He looked away, pulling a packet of papers off the nightstand next to him and smoothing out the curled edges. “Let’s see when you’re due for more meds.” His finger dragged a line down the sheet to check the times the nurse had written down for him. “If you’re in pain you can take a couple more Tylenol or Oxycodone. Or both. It’s your call.” He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, pressing the sleep/wake button to check the time. “It’s just a little after six, so you can’t take any more Ibuprofen for another couple hours yet.”

“Peeta.”

“Did you want me to go grab some meds for you, because I don’t mind getting—”

“ _Peeta_.”

He sighed, dropping the packet back onto the dresser, and then flopped down on the bed so that he was lying next to her on his back. “We should probably leave it until you’re feeling better, okay? We can talk about it more when you’re not hopped up on an entire pharmacy of pain meds.”

“Like you said, I’m overdue for almost all of them. So I’m perfectly capable right now of following whatever you have to say.”

He turned his head to look at her, his eyes scanning her face for several moments. “I don’t pity you,” he finally said, his voice as quiet and deep as the rumbling traffic in the distance. “Not generally, anyway. I’m making a special exception for today.” He reached his hand out to her on the comforter, palm facing upward, and she let her hand fall from her abdomen and into his. His fingers curled around hers, squeezing her hand hard enough to make her look up at him instead of where they were joined. “But I don’t think you’re pitiful. Far from it.” She watched Peeta’s Adam’s apple bob as he considered his next words. “And even today, seeing you like this…” She could hear the tightness in his throat, and she knew what he was fighting. She’d been fighting—and losing—the same battle all day too. “Seeing you like this... pity isn’t a fraction of what I feel. You’re… one of my best friends. You don’t know how important you are to me. So... don’t do it.”

“Don’t do what?” she choked out, her heart pounding furiously in her chest. Immediately she thought of her resolution to be more truthful and open with him. Maybe he didn’t want to have heart to heart conversations with her. Maybe he knew the way she felt—maybe he’d _always_ known—and didn’t want to hurt her on what was already the worst day of her life. Maybe that’s why he wanted to wait until she was better ( _and would she ever really be better?_ ).

“Don’t act like I’m here out of obligation or charity or whatever other bullshit you’re concocting in that brain of yours. If you think I’m looking at you with pity, then you don’t know me at all.”

A tear streamed down her face, followed by another. And another. It seemed she was a bottomless well, an overflowing reservoir of misery and regret.

“Thank you for saying that.”

“Well, it’s true.”

They lay in silence for a few minutes, watching the shadows descend on each other’s faces as dusk settled in the room.

“What happened with Madge?” Katniss asked.

Peeta shrugged in reply, looking up at the ceiling. “We wanted different things.”

“And you realized that after dating for five years... after living together? I mean, you guys adopted a dog a few months ago. You seemed... pretty settled. What changed?”

“Settled’s a good word for it.” His thumb stroked her hand, and Katniss watched him chew his bottom lip. Eventually he answered. “Well…we got to talking about a month or so ago, right after you told us that you were… you know...”

“Pregnant,” Katniss supplied for him.

He nodded. “Right. And Madge asked if we were headed there too. Marriage, babies, a house in the suburbs. The whole nine yards. And I realized I didn’t want any of that.”

“No?” Her eyebrows shot up. “I’d always assumed you’d get married and have a family. That you wanted that.”

“Not with her,” he said, his words so quiet she could barely hear them in the thunderous silence of the room.

“Oh.” Katniss turned her eyes back to the ceiling, thinking about the kind of woman Peeta would choose to marry and start a family with. She’d probably be some horrible, natural blonde with big tits and a perky ass. A yoga instructor. Or a swimsuit model. Some twenty-something he’d meet at a trendy bar in Weho and instantly fall in love with for her witty banter and natural aptitude for blowjobs. She wouldn’t be someone plain and straightforward like Madge. And she certainly wouldn’t be someone emotionally stunted and physically broken like she was, someone who’d demonstrated she couldn’t even do something as simple as make a baby.

She could see him looking at her out of the corner of her eye. “Oh? That’s all you got?” he asked, prodding her to say more.

“Yeah,” Katniss sighed, thinking of the holy terror he’d date next—the one who’d meet his high mark for marriage. “I think Madge was the first of your girlfriends who actually liked me.”

“It’s cute that you think that,” he said, obviously amused.

“What?!” Her head fell to the side, staring at him, aghast. “You let me think for the past _five years_ that Madge liked me!”

“She tolerated you. Close enough.”

“Why would you let me think that… and why… why didn’t she like me? God, am I that awful that every single one of your girlfriends wants to cut me?”

“I think it’s the opposite. You’re a little too... not awful. And some women get jealous.”

She laughed wryly. “Jealous of me? That’s rich. Is it the one bedroom shack I’m renting in someone else’s backyard or the fact I can fit into a training bra, do you think, that drives these women mad with jealousy?”

Peeta looked at her seriously, no trace of humor left anywhere on his face. “I know you don’t believe me, but it’s the truth. I never told you, but when I first started dating Madge she’d get pissed whenever we texted back and forth or if I ever mentioned you, and do you know what I flat out told her one day?”

“No,” Katniss said under her breath, wincing like she’d just shouted it.

“Not to ever make me choose. That if it was between her or you, it would be you. Always.” He cleared his throat and pulled his hand away, resting it on his stomach. “I told her that when it came to my friends, I’m a package deal, and that included—especially included—you.”

“So she _tolerated_ me.”

He nodded. “It was good enough for me. Whatever else she might have felt, she did a pretty good job of keeping it to herself.”

Katniss chortled. “I’d say.”

They lay in silence, listening to the dogs in the neighborhood barking at each other through the gloom of the twilight, spooked by their own shadows and by the invisible phantoms they thought were threatening their homes but that were actually nothing more than sprinklers on timers and college kids making beer runs.

“That particular conversation hasn’t always gone over well in the past,” he said after a few minutes. “With the women I’ve dated. Madge handled it like a champ, but some…”

“It sounds like you would have saved yourself a lot of suffering if we’d never met—and by that I mean you would have gotten more pussy.”

He barked out a laugh, rolling over onto his side to face her. “Sometimes I can’t believe the shit that comes out of your mouth.”

“Yeah, if you think that’s entertaining you should hear the shit that stays in my head.”

“I’d like to,” he answered without missing a beat.

Carefully, Katniss rolled onto her side to face him. It was now or never, today or nothing. “You could always ask,” she said, hoping he couldn’t hear the tremor in her voice. Her knees began to tremble from anxiety, so she slid a hand between them, trying to hold them still. She had no way of knowing if he’d take her up on her offer, much less what he’d ask her if he did. Was anything really fair game?

Peeta lay motionless for several moments, the sound of his heavy breathing scoring the silence. His hesitation—his difficulty in speaking—made her shake. She pulled the comforter higher, hoping that if he noticed he’d think she was cold instead of scared shitless.

Finally, he spoke. “Did you tell the father?”

For a fraction of a second she was stung by the question, by the insinuation she’d keep something like a baby a secret from its own father, but then it occurred to her that if it was true that she knew everything there was to know about Peeta, then it was safe to say he knew everything about her. He made a fair point—open communication wasn’t her forte, especially with people she didn’t know well and—case in point—sometimes even with the ones she knew best.

“That I was pregnant, or that I’d lost the baby?”

He shrugged. “Either. Both. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter which.”

She brought her hand up to the comforter between them and pressed down on the downy material so that she could look into both of his eyes.

And then she told him the truth.

“There isn’t one.”

He rolled onto his back, effectively moving away from her, and that stung too. “Right,” he chuckled softly, “Like the Easter Bunny.” Drumming his fingers on his stomach, he added, “That’s fine…. you don’t have to tell me who he was or anything like that. I shouldn’t have asked. It’s not really any of my business.”

“No, it is—” she paused when he turned his head, his eyes hawkishly meeting hers. His face had taken on an unfamiliar expression, and in the dark it was impossible for her to make out the exact color of his eyes. “I’d tell you if I knew,” she whispered. “All I’ve got is his first name, and I don’t even know if it’s real.”

He frowned. “What do you mean? Did something happen… did someone do something to you?”

“No, no. God, no. Nothing like that.” She hissed out a breath between her teeth, hating that she had to admit this to him, of all people. “The father… he was a donor. Just some guy making a few easy bucks. I picked him out using an online search tool, paid some clinic six hundred bucks, and then I...took it... and had an IUI.”

“A what?”

She rolled onto her back and groaned, desperately wanting a couple Oxycodone so she could end this conversation. She shut her eyes, hoping sleep would magically come for her and sweep her away to Neverland. “An intrauterine insemination,” she grudgingly explained.

He rubbed at his face with both hands, his steepled fingers pressing at the bridge of his nose like he was suddenly fighting a piercing headache. “Why would you do that?”

“ _Why?_ To have a baby.”

“Obviously. But I mean, why would you choose some random guy online—why not just wait for the right one?”

“Peeta, I’ll be thirty-three next month. I haven’t gone on so much as a date in almost two years. How much longer should I have waited, do you think?”

He sat up, pushing his back against the wall, and crossed his arms around his bent knees. “So that was that, huh? You just decided to go it alone?”

“Basically.”

She could tell he was pissed. The tension was billowing off him like smoke plumes from a volcano, filling the room and eating up the oxygen, making it hard to breathe.

“Why are you being like this?” she asked.

He leaned his head back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling. “I’m sorry. But I just don’t understand why you didn’t talk to me about how you were feeling. I wish you had. I fucking wish you’d just talked to me.”

Was he actually suggesting that he could have talked her out of this—that if she’d been more open with him she could have avoided all this suffering?

“Well,” she shot back, bristling at the thought of that. “Why didn’t you tell me at any point in the past fucking month that you and your live-in girlfriend had broken up? That’s a pretty big thing you somehow kept from me, and I don’t understand why either—what kind of friend do you think I am? You should have opened up and talked to me instead of assuming I was some asshole too wrapped up in her own life to care about yours. So what about the way _you’re_ feeling?”

He closed his eyes, his shoulders slumping in defeat, and ran his hands through his hair. “She said not to put it all on red.”

Either she was still groggy from the meds, or Peeta was talking in riddles. “What are you talking about?”

“The nurse.” He tipped his head to the side to look at her, still holding his head in his hands. “She said not to make any major life decisions today. Not to gamble your life savings away.”

“Yeah, well, the nurse had a ladyboner for traffic and also possibly a Ritalin problem, so maybe we don’t listen to her, and you tell me whatever it is you want to say.”

He gave a weak laugh and looked down at her. Even in the dark she could see it was that look again, the one he said wasn’t pity. Whatever it meant, it made her heart squeeze in her chest.

“You’re looking at me like that again,” she whispered.

“Yeah, so?” He sighed and then laid down on his side, facing her, one arm curled beneath his head, still looking at her.

“It sure looks like pity.”

“It’s not. It’s… Look, you remember the day we met, right? Freshman year, the game against Stanford? At Finnick’s tailgate?”

Like she could ever forget. She curled both her arms around herself, holding onto his old shirt. “Yeah.”

“I don’t know how it took almost two months after the semester started for us to meet, but I got to the Rose Bowl late.” He gave a rueful smile, “It always comes back to the traffic, doesn’t it?”

“God, not you too.”

He chuckled, his fingers playing absentmindedly with a loose thread on the comforter. “Anyway, you were there, playing the most half-assed game of ladder golf I’d ever seen. You were laughing, and that asshole Hawthorne was hanging all over you, and I think if you’d really known me then you would have realized it’s the same exact look I’m giving you now.”

Katniss felt light-headed, dizzy, and nauseous, and she knew it had nothing to do with the drugs and everything to do with Peeta. What the fuck was he telling her?

“In some ways that was the best day of my life,” he said. “I met you. But the thing is that I met you two hours too late, and I missed any shot I might have possibly had. Two hours, and then you dated that asshole for four years. So it was also kind of the worst… or I thought it was, until about a month ago when I found out you were pregnant with some other guy’s baby. I realized _that_ was the worst day of my life.” He cleared his throat, then added, “Until today.”

She reeled from his admission, more forceful than the Earth spinning on its axis as it hurtled around the sun, and she clutched the bed to hold herself down, to keep herself from falling away.

All this time. All the missed chances and almosts, the series of miscarriages that made up their lives…

She broke. The crack in her foundation split violently, the walls of the levee collapsing, and she began to sob. How could both things be true at the same time, that he loved her and that all was lost?

“Hey,” he said soothingly, reaching out and cradling her in his arms. “I’m so sorry. You don’t need my shit. You need a best friend. And I’m always going to be that for you, no matter what. Just like I always have been. And there’s nothing else that matters. I swear.”

“Don’t say that.” She pushed at his chest with her fists—pushed because life was so fucking unfair and she was powerless to do anything about it. She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs, to wail, to knock down a wall and set fire to this entire godforsaken city, to grasp onto him and hold him and kiss him until she could believe for one second that he was hers and that something in this miserable fucking world could be right.

“Just get it out. Get it all out. The truth. Say it. Because I can’t—” she sobbed, shuddering, gasping for breath, “I can’t hold it in anymore. I can’t—”

“Shhhh,” he hushed, pressing his face to her hair and kissing her temple. “I don’t want to tell you like this. Not today. But I’m not going to hide it anymore from you, okay? It’s you. It’s always been you.” He took a deep, ragged breath and huffed out, “It will always be you.”

She wrapped an arm around his torso and burrowed into his chest, seeking his warmth, needing to get as close to his heart as she could, to bask in the feeling of another person’s life being inextricably tied to her own.

She hadn’t known how badly she needed that until she had it and then lost it—and in losing, somehow found it again.

 

* * *

 

When she woke up she was curled in the fetal position, Peeta tucked in like a big spoon behind her, his hand resting on the curve of her waist. At some point he’d fallen asleep too—she could feel the slow and steady movement of his chest against her back, his warm breath ruffling the loose strands of her hair every time he exhaled.

It was pitch black in the room, and the sounds out on the street were muffled and sedate, the drowsy sort of sounds someone made after they had too much to drink and before they passed out on the curb. The neighborhood had gone to sleep, and based off the hush that had settled over the city, she guessed it was sometime after midnight.

Long overdue for pain meds, she shifted uncomfortably, wincing at the cramping in her abdomen. The pain was bad, her body screaming for attention. She had just resolved to get up and take care of herself when Peeta shifted behind her, his body tensing as he woke up and realized where he was.

“Shit,” he said, leaning up on one elbow, his fingers gripping her tighter as he pushed himself up. “Did I fall asleep? Fuck, I’m so sorry—do you need me to get up and get you anything?”

“No.” She shook her head. “It’s okay. The nap was nice.” She wondered whether having _this_ —Peeta lying next to her at night when the doubts had taken over—would have changed things.

But she didn’t really wonder. She knew.

Her hand fell to her stomach, working its way beneath her shirt to rest on her bare skin. Her fingertips could feel her betrayal through her skin.

The truth was that, for as much as she’d wanted her baby, she had been terrified of it. Terrified of the morning sickness and the twinges in her uterus, of the pain and the nausea and the way she had no control over her body. Terrified at the thought of labor and sleepless nights. Terrified that her child wouldn’t love her. Or that she wouldn’t love it. Terrified she’d let her baby down.

—Which she had.

“I didn’t want it enough,” she said out loud for the first time. “That’s why I lost it.”

She let the horrible truth saturate the air, each syllable soaking into the sepulchral darkness. And when the truth had infected the air and poisoned her lungs, she began to choke and heave on it, gasping for something she could breathe that wouldn’t hurt so fucking much.

“I killed it,” she sobbed. “I didn’t love it enough, and it knew it. It fucking knew it. I was so scared— so fucking scared I couldn't even be happy. I was terrified. And this is what I get. It’s all I deserve. A dead baby. I didn’t—I didn’t deserve it.”

She felt arms wrap around her, a solid body behind her to catch her from falling.

He let her cry until her sobs became whimpers and snot ran down her face. Until her lungs burned and the world had become nothing but a blur. He let her cry until the fire died out and there was nothing left but the smoldering rubble of a woman.

Then he softly reminded her, “It doesn’t work that way. And I think it's the things we love most that terrify us.”

She clutched her stomach, grasping at the emptiness inside of it, wanting to touch where it hurt, but knowing she could never reach that deep. “I miss it. I already miss it,” she whimpered. “The way it felt. The way _I_ felt. I felt like a mom. Like someone important.” She wiped her eyes and then placed her tear-soaked hand back on her stomach. “I miss my baby.”

“Listen to yourself, Katniss. Right now... what you’re saying _right now_. And when you start to blame yourself... when you try to tell yourself this bullshit about how you didn’t want it enough, I want you to remember how much you loved that baby and how hard you cried when you lost it.”

She reached up, taking his hand from around her shoulder, and pressed it to her lips, letting it linger there for a moment so she could feel his skin on hers. Then she took his hand and placed it beneath her shirt, on her abdomen, so he would know exactly where she hurt. His palm was warm on her belly, his thumb gentle as he stroked the place her baby had been, and she let him hold her because, somehow, Peeta had loved her too.

“You’re going to make a great mother, you know,” he said.

She closed her eyes, letting his voice seep into her, settling into every chasm and pit that had been punched into her by grief. It filled the gaps and spaces like it knew where to fit. Like it always did.

Like it always would.

“I promise.”

 

  

_For Mia_


End file.
